Another post about hare

We have bunnies. Not pets in a cage. Wild beasts that prowl our backyard and chow down on the creeping Charlie I’ve worked so hard to cultivate in place of grass over the past decade.

Usually these monsters hot rod into the bushes as soon as we step out the back door, but a couple mornings ago, two of them were too preoccupied with doin’ what comes natchurly to succumb to the flight imperative.

Just watching that courting ritual wore me out. Think of playing one-on-one Kill the Guy With the Ball, only there’s no ball.

But then I got to thinking. What would a bunny romance novel read like? I’m guessing no one’s ever written one. So I did. I call it Love in the Grass.

Jacqui Rabbitson emerged from the garden and drank in the warmth of the day. It had been a long time since she produced that litter with that no-good Bud Bunnye. She hadn’t seen him in months. Probably flew off with some bird, she thought. All males are no good, anyway. Who needs ’em?

And then she saw Lago Morpha sunning himself. What a conceited jerk. Thinks he’s so hot, with that mottled fur, Latin name and, ooh, hairy chest. And such tall ears. She sighed. A buck like him would never see anything in a doe like her. There had been a time when she was considered quite a fluffy piece of cottontail. What giving birth twenty-six times over twelve weeks will do to one’s figure.

But, wait. Was…was Lago looking her way? He approached her, cocky and sly. He was the epitome of sylvagus floridanus hunkitude Quiet…and lean. He sniffed her rear. Jacqui had longed for a male to do that ever since the runt of the last litter finally weaned and made its way into the next yard. That was thirty-six long, lonesome hours ago.

Jacqui dashed two feet to the left. Lago chased her down. Jacqui ducked right. Lago was upon her instantly. Ah, this one means business. Jacqui leapt a full eighteen inches straight up. She couldn’t help herself. Lago was bunny enough for two hutches.

Lago made Jacqui a part of his territory by rubbing the secretions from the scent glands in his chin all over her face. She reveled in the bedeviling heat of his pheromones. Also a delectably sweet hint of partially rotted crabapple. He mounted her, and when his bunnihood entered her, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and hear carrots crunching in his teeth.

Their bodies became as one. Jacqui’s mind raced back—back forty seconds to when she did not know Lago—and felt as though she had known him forever. Or at least for the entire ten months of her life.

Two hours later, Jacqui lay atop the very fur she had ripped from her own body to line the nest where she would raise her next litter of kittens (or whatever the hell baby rabbits are called). She knew she would never see hide nor hare of Lago again, that she would have to be content with glimpses of his speckled visage in the faces of the four to twelve little darlings that would arrive in about twenty-nine days.

That was more than enough for Jacqui, though. She smiled. Lago’s pungent scent still clung to her fur, but even when it was gone, no one could take away the one-hundred-and-seven seconds they’d shared in the grass that glorious summer day.

* I really do not think our bunnies are monsters. It was just funnier to say that.

A shift is commonly confused with a sheath, and the two words have more in common than the way they sound. Both refer to uncomplicated-looking dresses that end somewhere around the knee. The difference is that a shift tends to be less fitted around the waist and hips. Its straight lines are sweet and waifish in a way that the sheath, with all of its body-clinging tenacity, never will be.